Infected
by sassqueenclara
Summary: AU. Clara Oswald goes on a search for Eric Northman and is shocked to find he's dying; giving up on life. Will she be able to convince him otherwise? One shot.


He'd disappeared.

Just out of the blue, he had up and left and Clara didn't know why.

He'd meant to be coming to visit her in London during the Christmas holidays, but that hadn't happened. Clara had left him quite a fair few text messages, all of which were sick with worry, some of which were quite angry that he hadn't bothered to reply. Even though contact with Eric had been thin at best from about October, it had dropped altogether over Christmas.

By the February half term holidays, Clara decided to take matters into her own hands.

The situation had kept her preoccupied for quite some time at Coal Hill. There was less enthusiasm when teaching her favourite classes, definitely less gusto when trying to encourage the classes she wasn't too keen on. Her weekly adventures with The Doctor hadn't been enough to keep her mind off of what was going on in the other half of her life, so she'd quietly and politely said to her best friend that she'd contact him as soon as she could because she needed a break and needed to find Eric.

Even though The Doctor had said he could find the vampire within a few seconds, Clara simply shook her head. This wasn't to do with him – well, it was to some extent, but Clara wanted to keep him out of it. The whole world had gone topsy turvy as soon as that bloody vampire virus had broken out, and there was no way she'd be leading a Time Lord into that mess of a battle. She knew how a normal vampire reacted to a Time Lord (Eric admitted to there being a lot of self restraint around the alien), let alone a rabid one trying to find their last meal.

So with The Doctor gone for a little while, Clara was able to focus better on the task at hand.

It had taken her four out of seven days of the February half term to do it, but she had managed to track down Eric's progeny with a little help from the vampires and humans of Louisiana and their own connections. She'd never met Eric's progeny before and was told to approach with caution. That was how Clara was going about the entire thing anyway. She was going to have to travel to places she'd never been to before, places where there was a chance of her being found by the Hepatitis V-infected vampires, places where other humans were not so kind.

She'd left a message to Danny Pink to say that there had been a family crisis and she needed to leave at once. As much as she loved her children at school, she loved Eric more. She needed to stop herself from worrying before it got too much and she ended up ridiculously angry with him instead of anxious.

Danny could see through her lies.

Danny called her back and told her that he knew what she was doing.

Danny promised not to tell.

Clara had insisted on owing him, but he'd put his foot down and told her that if things had been different between them – that if she had not been with Eric and could be with him instead – he would have done the same thing. He told her to go and find the love of her life and to come back safe. Clara almost cried down the phone, and told him she'd be as fast as possible.

On the sixth day of the February half term, Clara took a flight to Brazil, where Pamela Swynford de Beaufort had last been seen.

All she had was a backpack with three changes of clothes, and enough money to last her a good three weeks on her travels.

Following tip off after tip off from various humans, Clara circumnavigated Rio de Janeiro and just about missed Pamela, but not before finding out where she was headed to next.

She wished she could have admired the country more; she was on a mission, not a holiday.

The next stop was Morocco, and that was where she ended up having to crawl the streets at night. There seemed to be more vampires than humans in the capital, meaning that it was very little use repeating the method she used in Brazil.

She found Pamela faster.

It was a strange place – kind of like a club, but the basement was filled with vampires playing a twisted version of Russian Roulette. Clara winced every time she noticed the leather-clad blonde vampire pulled the trigger, and felt the bile rise in her throat upon seeing the male vampire turn to a bloody mush of intestines and innards when he lost.

It appeared that Pamela was searching for Eric too – naturally – and she stopped in her tracks upon seeing Clara at the door.

"Why do I get the feelin' that I know you?" Pamela asked her.

"You don't. Are you Pamela Swynford de Beaufort?"

"Who's asking?"

"Clara Oswald."

"You lookin' for Eric?"

"Yes."

The vampire held up a piece of paper and Clara had a brief look at it.

"This is where we go next. Don't think this makes us besties or anything – but I'm glad he has some taste."

With that, Pamela sauntered past Clara, beckoning for the human woman to follow her.

It didn't take that long to find Eric in the end.

They came to Paris, and Pamela told Clara the history of the brief time that she and Eric had spent there in the eighties; culminating in the death of the human woman that Eric had appeared to fall in love with, as well as the showing up of Nan Flanagan (whatever had happened to her? Clara wondered) in order to punish them for breaking various vampire laws.

At the little villa, Pamela told Clara to wait outside, just so that she could be sure it was definitely safe and that Eric was definitely in there. Her voice only held certainty on the fact that Eric would be in there. Clara thought it fair that she should wait; after all, Eric was Pamela's maker, and they had a much stronger connection and history together.

So Clara sat outside on the porch with her backpack, her arms folded around herself. She may have been wearing a coat, but it was still chilly out and she was shaking from the cold. Maybe she was shaking from the nerves as well. Pamela had been a while, so surely that meant Eric was in there?

Soon enough it was all confirmed for her.

"Clara," came Pamela's Southern voice.

The brunette woman jumped and turned round. There was a sadness in Pamela's eyes that she couldn't quite place, and slowly she rose form her spot on the porch, a lump seeming to form in her throat.

"Is – is he in there?" she asked quietly. Pamela nodded.

"Downstairs, in the basement."

"Okay."

Clara stared at the front door for a few moments before taking her in time in making her way inside. The staircase leading down was pretty much right in front of her as soon as she entered the villa, and with wobbly knees she went down it.

Nothing really could have prepared her for what she found in the room at the bottom of the stairs.

Eric weakly lying on a recliner, barely able to keep his eyes open and barely registering the fact that she had come into the room. Clara slid her backpack off her shoulders and onto the floor, the sound properly alerting him to her presence. He looked sick. Really sick. Coming closer to him, she could see the veins in his neck pulsing quite violently, and she dropped to her knees beside him, tears in her eyes. It was Hepatitis V, that was all it could be.

He turned to look at her, reaching out to cup her face gently.

"Why did you come?" He didn't even sound like the Eric she knew. The powerful, strong, charismatic Viking god of a vampire Eric Northman.

"Because I was worried about you. It's been – it's been _six months,_ Eric."

"You abandoned your children."

"It's only been a week and a bitsince February half term ended." A sad smile came to her face. "They can survive without me. _You_ can't, though," she chuckled, albeit a light one that was riddled with the tears that were now streaming down her cheeks and over Eric's fingers.

"Don't cry," he whispered.

"How did it happen?" Clara touched the hand that was on her face and gently moved it so she could hold it with both her own. His hand was so much larger compared to hers, and it had the ability to crush both of her hands at the same time. Not that he ever would, and not that it could even entertain that notion at the current moment.

"I must have had blood from someone infected," he groaned in protest as he tried to sit up a little straighter.

"No. Not that. I mean... the whole thing in general," she murmured, her gaze dropping to stare at the veins protruding through his skin.

"Sarah Newlin."

"Oh my stars – Pamela!" Clara turned round a little angrily, letting go of Eric's hand and wiping away her tears furiously. "Stop doing that!"

"Pamela? Seriously? You didn't tell her she could call you 'Pam?'"

Clara glanced down at Eric to see he was smirking a teeny tiny bit, however that faded when he saw that she was less than amused at being eavesdropped on.

"Sarah Newlin is still alive," Pam carried on. "Personally, I'd like to kill her."

"Which one was Sarah Newlin?" Clara bit her lip, not wanting to make a single comment about how easy it was for Pam – even Eric – to slip into the mindset of murder. That was something she was not on board with in the slightest.

"Wife of Steve Newlin, leader of the Fellowship of the Sun."

"Oh. Really? She's behind all this?" Clara gestured at Eric. "But... she looked like sunshine."

"Trust me, little mouse, she really isn't." Eric was slowly standing up now, and he stumbled a little as he made it onto his two feet, but gently grabbed hold of Clara as a means of support. She only felt a little more at ease with his tall frame looming over her. It gave a sense of normalcy. "She had the TruBlood supply poisoned, hence why the world became fucked. Is that why you didn't bring your friend along?"

"It was too dangerous for him." Clara gave Eric those big, sad eyes – she knew that Eric's response would be _it's too dangerous for you, too,_ but she could hold her own and had been in enough sticky situations to know where she shouldn't go. She had been fretting about Eric. She wanted to see him safe, and all she saw right now was simply a weakened _echo_ of what he really was.

"Clara..."

Tears threatened to spring out of her eyes again. That was the first time he'd used her name in a long while.

"Clara, go home. You found me. There's nothing left of the world for me to see anymore. It's been a thousand years and it's been my oyster. It's time for me to go."

The human woman glanced back at Pam, who held a stony expression as she glared at the ground. Eric seemed to have given his progeny a similar sort of speech.

"Don't look at her." His finger tips were soft on her chin as he tilted her face to look up at him. Clara's eye line remained focused on his lips – she was paranoid that he might try to erase her memory of the whole incident, and she hated herself for thinking that. Eric wasn't heartless like that. "Clara," he breathed.

"Don't tell me you don't have anything left to live for. Don't tell Pam that either." She still refused to look him in the eye as she said it. "Don't you dare, Eric Northman." Yet somewhere along the lines of thinking what she was going to next say to him, she found her courage to look him in the eye.

"Because the world can change, and you know it. You've been around for a thousand years and you've seen it change before your own eyes! So don't tell me it's got nothing left to offer you. And do you know what else the world has got _now,_ that it didn't have a thousand years ago? It's got a five foot two English teacher in it who _loves you._ And she has enough confidence to believe that she's worth sticking around for.

"It also most _certainly_ does _not_ matter whether or not Pam can hold her own either – she's your _progeny._ You told me once that you were so proud of her. That she was one of the best things that ever happened to you. Don't leave her behind either, because she loves you too. I don't know it what way she loves you, but on our way here she told me that she'd been searching for you for six months. Six. Months. She's been searching far longer than I have because I lead such a different life from you that I didn't even realise anything was wrong until you didn't show up at Christmas – again!"

Clara hadn't realised that her voice had been increasing in volume as she went along, but as soon as she had stopped talking, she found herself almost panting for breath. All the same, Clara hadn't broken eye contact once. Eric hadn't tried anything on her either – he probably didn't have the strength for it.

Nobody said anything for some time, so Clara took a step back from Eric so that he was no longer touching her face, and she looked at Pam, who appeared to be triumphant. The female vampire's gaze was fixed on Eric and so Clara turned back to him again, slightly confused, until she felt his cool lips against her own; soft, yet with a small flame behind it. She found herself clutching at his black tank top in an effort to stop him from pulling away – which is what he eventually did, and he pressed his forehead against her own.

"From now on, you're _my_ Impossible Girl."

"I don't care what you do to that Sarah Newlin, just keep me out of it."

Clara darted over to her backpack and fished a book out of it. A bright blue one with familiar red lettering on the front. She ignored the raised eyebrow that Pam gave her, and went back to Eric, holding it out to him.

"You're going to take this. And you're going to come back to me. You promise?"

Eric precariously took the _101 Places To See_ book in his hands as he stared at it, and he wasn't sure how to feel about what it meant. He knew for a fact that that book had been her mother's. Eric didn't want ot make a promise that he might not be able to keep. He didn't want to die and have to have Pam deliver the book back to Clara.

He nodded.

"I promise," he said in a quiet voice. His lips then twitched upwards for a moment. "Go home, Clara. Go back to your children."

"Okay," she agreed. Then stepping up on tip toe, she planted a kiss on his cheek and went to pick up her backpack. She gave Pam a small goodbye and moved past her to make her way up the stairs.

"She's one hell of a girl," Clara heard Pam say just as she reached the top. "And she's right about everything, you know."

"She's got a knack for that."

A smile made it's way onto Clara's face before she took her leave from the villa.

* * *

><p>"Hey!" Danny called out to her in the car park a few days later. He jogged over to her. "Everything all right?"<p>

Admittedly, Clara had been quite surprised he was eager to know what was going on in her life.

"It's – it's... it's complicated," she sighed as they made their way into the main building. "I'm sorry. It's just... he's not well. It's that bloody awful vampire disease-"

"Hepatitis V?"

"Yeah. It's that."

A frown began to settle on Danny's face.

"But... doesn't that mean he's-"

"Don't." Clara rougly took hold of Danny by the arm and dragged him into a nearby empty classroom. "Look, I know you're concerned and I can't thank you enough for that, but I don't want to talk about this. Not this time." She could feel that lump in her throat again. Clara knew very well that there was a chance that Eric could die, and it was something she didn't want to think about.

"I'm sorry," Danny said a little lamely, and put his arm around her.

"It's okay. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so on edge and borderline snappy. I told you before, my mouth wants to go solo."

Danny chuckled at that.

"It can go solo all it wants. You're upset. It's fine, really."

* * *

><p>Another four or five days passed, not that Clara was keeping count anyway.<p>

It was a Wednesday now, and usually she'd be off on some distant planet or hurtling backwards and forwards in time for an adventure with that grumpy stick insect of a Time Lord she called her best friend.

Quite idly, Clara was sipping on a cup of tea in the living room of her quaint Shoreditch flat, hoping that the stereotype of _'tea fixes every problem,'_ would pull through and be true for her.

Not really, so it would seem.

Surely she should have heard something from Eric or Pam by now?

It was beginning to worry her further than when Eric had properly disappeared. He was dying, and there was a good chance that he might be dead. Even though Clara had told him in her little speech about the world that she loved him, before she left the villa in France she hadn't outright said to him that she loved him. If anything, that would be her greatest regret, if it turned out that she couldn't be saved.

Rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingers, Clara told herself not to think about it anymore, except that was all that was at the forefront of her mind.

Did Eric know for certain that she really did love him?

Maybe he did know. They'd not exactly shared blood, but was there a chance he knew?

He have been lacking a little in the emotions department, but surely he could see how truly and wholly in love she was with him? Clara had turned down so many people after meeting Eric, even if their first meeting was... less than pleasant. However it was that curiosity she had about him to see if he was a good person underneath all the armour he wore was what kept all other potential boyfriends away and her pursuing Eric.

There was no regret about that, that was for sure.

He _was_ a good person, as arrogant and dangerous he could be. Eric didn't let in people easily, and it certainly took some gentle coaxing from Clara at first, but he eventually told her things of his own accord without her asking. She didn't ask out of pure nosiness or to satisfy her own curiosity – she asked because Eric was someone she genuinely cared about. If anybody needed any proof of that, she could happily tell them that she'd trekked around the world looking for him.

If anything, that was love.

And that was what was going roun Clara's head for the later portion of the evening.

Then around about nine o'clock at night, just Clara was considering going to bed, there was a knock at the door.

She set the now empty mug of tea down on the coffee table, her heart beginning to hammer away in her chest. What if it was Pam? What if Eric hadn't made it? What would she do then? All sorts of questions ran through her mind as she steadily made her way towards the front door.

Clara attempted to mentally psyche herself up for whatever was behind it.

She opened the door.

"You took your time. I was beginning to wonder if you were actually going to _answer_ the door."

Leaning back casually against the wall opposite her flat, leather bound and carrying her _101 Places To See_ book with a cheeky grin on his face, was none other than Eric Northman.

He didn't even have to take one step forward before Clara literally launched herself at him, ended up wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. It took him by surprise, that was for sure, as he dropped the travel book on the floor. However that surprise was replaced with relief that she was happy to see him, and as his arms encircled her waist warmly, he breathed in the scent of her hair and pressed his lips to the top of her head.

"You're okay," Clara spoke into his shoulder, her voice muffled.

"I keep my promises, Clara Oswald."

"I was hoping you would," she said as she unhooked her legs from around him and lowered herself to the floor again. She then picked up the book and grinned up at him.

"What?"

"You're better."

"I am. There was a cure," Eric paused for a moment, looking uneasy. "By the way... some serious shit went down and now I own a company which is synthesising the cure..."

Clara's eyebrows threatened to go into her hairline.

"You look like somebody just kicked your puppy. Come inside and tell me about it."

She led the way through to the living room, placing the book on the table and settling down on the sofa. As soon as Eric sat next to her, she curled into his side quite happily. Eric put his arm around her, his fingers lightly brushing her upper arm as he did so.

"So synthesising. The cure was in blood?"

"Sarah Newlin's, to be exact."

"...Right."

"The good news is that I should be able to come over here more often..." Eric's fingers did not cease in their lazing stroking of her arm. "I might even get my own apartment here."

"That'd be nice." Clara didn't say anything for a little while and neither did Eric. They apparently seemed comfortable to just sit there in silence, however there was still something niggling at the back of her mind. "Eric... in France... you were just about ready to die, weren't you?"

A tiny sigh escaped from between Eric's lips.

"I was. You feel so hopeless with that disease. Clara, I'd rather not talk about it right now." His voice may have been soft, but the thought behind that last sentence certainly was not.

Clara knew that Eric would talk about it eventually.

"The point is that you and Pam found me. That's all that matters. You found me and things were dealt with."

"Yeah..." she muttered. "I suppose." Clara adjusted her position so that her head was directly over where his heart would have been beating. At first, the fact there was no pulsing rhythm under skin unnerved her, but it had soon become peaceful to her. The silence in his skin was blissful, because it let her forget the world and all she could feel was just _him._

"You don't need to worry anymore. I'm okay, I promise."

"Good," she smiled. "I've missed you, Blondie Bear."

"I've missed you, my Brave Little Mouse."

"Of course you have. I'm one _'hell of a __girl__,'_ after all," Clara giggled.

"That you are. Pam's never spoken truer words."

"How is she?"

"She's fine. Running Fangtasia for the time being."

"Fun," Clara remarked sarcastically. Eric hummed in agreement.

"Speaking of fun... anything you want to do tonight?"

"I'm happy like this for the time being. Really." If it were possible, Clara snuggled even closer to Eric.

"I am too."

For the most part of the night, they sat in silence or would occasionally make small talk. Clara found herself sleepy and soon dozed off on Eric. Basking in the silence, the vampire focused on listening to her lulling heartbeat, taking pride in the fact he was still around to hear it. It seemed off, but he was certain that every human had a _different_ kind of heartbeat.

Eventually, Eric scooped Clara up into his arms and carried her into her room, laying her on the bed and covering her with the thick blanket at the bottom of it.

It was four in the morning, and he had to go to ground soon.

Eric kissed her on the cheek.

"I love you."

And then he was gone.

* * *

><p><strong>Short explanation: The pairing of Clara OswaldEric Northman happened on tumblr, as would most crossover ships would happen. There's no generic timeline for it, to be honest, but it's amazing how easily you can fit one character into the other's world etc. Ahhh, crossovers. They're the best thing ever.**

**Leave a comment, maybe?**

**-sassqueenclara.**


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